


I Woke Up On This Hill (And I Was Just a Concept)

by shadowintheshade



Series: The World's Wrongs All Redressed [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Rebirth, I'd say modern AU, Identity Issues, M/M, Modern Era, POV First Person, Past Character Death, but it's not about being buried alive, but it's not really AU if it COULD happen right?, earth imagery, possibly triggering if you have a fear of being buried alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26162161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowintheshade/pseuds/shadowintheshade
Summary: It's 2020 and Arthur wakes up on Glastonbury Tor.First person Arthur POV with Merlin/ Arthur.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: The World's Wrongs All Redressed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910164
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	I Woke Up On This Hill (And I Was Just a Concept)

**I Woke Up On This Hill (And I Was Just A Concept)**

I woke up on this hill. And just for one moment, one brief flicker of a dragonfly moment, it seemed as though I had never been gone, like waking from the briefest sleep. Just last night, I closed my eyes and the mist came down and I slept the strangest sleep and I woke up on this hill -

I woke up on this hill and the sky above was grey, a soothing cloud before the eyes and the morning mists hung heavy and cool like a blanket over and around me as I was pushed up out of the soil, the daises pushing me up, vomiting me out of the earth and onto the hard, firm hug of the hill, stone and earth at my back and all around me just that endless mist spilling out and down into the beyond and up into the sky, that cover of grey not seeing me, not knowing, and I did not know in return.

I woke up on this hill squinting in the suddenness of consciousness, and it smelled of early morning and grass and wind, though it was warm enough, only just here – here was a place where the winds never died, never fell, never ceased their whispering, their needful churning of the mists that might never lift from this ground above the town, above the fields, above the trees if such were beyond there, and they had to be, or there was – a lake, I remembered a lake. I remembered the smell of water and the curve of the back of a dragon, warm like the earth in which I had rested and the arms in which I died -

Oh.

They were not here; I did not fly, and though there were tears I did not die, did not lie within the earth which could not have turned me out. I did not remember fire as I sailed out, and for a moment I thought you would join me in that boat headed out on to the lake, but in the morning air there is no lake to be scented on the breeze, and you are gone – or I -

I was gone, I closed my eyes and left and I woke up when time enough had passed, woke up on this hill, in this morning, with this blinking that means the movement of eyelids and my hand in front of my face was my hand, these legs my legs. I did not die, but I have been gone so long, so far, and you are mourning still -

I move and the earth shifts beneath the backs of my knees, dampening in the morning dew, and the grass breaks in my fingers, and the crush of it beneath me and the shift of small stone and beetle beneath my legs as I move, blinking into the light, and I have slept forever and am tired now and need to drink and piss and move, and nearby, in range of my questing hand is stone and a tower and it is not dark, the tower, it merely Is, and the stone watches me and shields me from the wind and I am frail in this new light -

I woke up on this hill and the light was not what it had been, the sky was not the same, something in the quality of the world had shifted; the world had changed since I was gone, and I woke up and I could hear hooting and reverberations from beneath me where once there was a lake but as the mists shift and the morning grows I know at least the lake is not – I move and need to stand and need – water. There are footfalls on the nearby soil and a couple of older folks in strangest garb rounding the curve of this hill, and perhaps I squint at them for I remember how it felt to squint and have a face that moves, a name, a body to be myself in, and they look back and the man grins -

“Good night, was it?” he says, and his speech is not what speech once was but enough to remember language and to know he imagines I passed out drunk on here perhaps last night, perhaps a millenia past and I find my tongue and I remember -

“Is this Avalon?” I say, and he laughs and looks at me and smiles and nods -

“Aye,” he says - “Some do say that. Re-enactment, is it? You look a bit rough mate – here -” I do not understand his words but I thank him for the water bottle and it feels like a thousand years of thickness sloughing down my throat and I choke and swallow and remember and have lungs and breathe and I hand the kind man back his water and thank him again.

I woke up on this hill with the feeling of dirt in my throat, the feeling of earth, the crumbling taste of worms and soil but it was a lie, I never slept below the ground, though where I was I cannot say, now when nor how, nor vanished into air or time or rusting rumbling decay; this is me, I am here and I remembered what it was to have a name, a face, a purpose and I remembered – purpose, purpose – what is my purpose now? I want to ask the man what time this is, what year, what place, what name when it is not Avalon for _some_ is not _all_ and so others call it by another name, and I want to ask so many things, but he has turned back to the woman he was with and I am forgotten, and I hear fragments of their talk as I get to my feet, hand on the tower wall, and turn into its archway -

“ _Camelot -”_ he says and I would show him the way but it does not come to me and I hear words that disjointed spell a mystery – _magic –_ he says – _a magical place –_ and _legend_ and _Arthur_ and _Merlin –_ Merlin!

  
  


Oh and I remember – it must have been so long ago, for words have changed and costume and when I sit inside the tower I touch unfamiliar materials – a box of liquids that say _drinks_ in bottles of no stuff I could name but I taste and they are sweeter than honeycomb and the labels bright as fresh paint but the colours not rendered by any brush or pen and perhaps I am dreaming still – _Merlin –_ he said -

  
  


Yes that was part of the dream, so many dreams that did not make sense, dreams of houses unlike any I had seen, building up as the lake dried and a town appeared and creatures rumbled past on roads so wide and grey they sliced apart the earth – dreams of you and the lightning with which you split the sky, and the earth torn up and remade and the creatures on their wheels reverberating over those roads – the rumbling I had felt in the earth when first I stirred and woke up on this hill and you – you were still as the earth turned and the world spun round and round a great ball in the sky and its surface was painted over with each turning, each century dragging down its towers and putting up new ones, everything remaking itself except the caves within the earth where I waited and was not.

  
  


I woke up. I will not forget it. I woke up on this hill, in this place, in this time and the plaque erected on the inside tower wall spoke of a year 1964 and _St Michael_ and the place _Glastonbury_ and none of the words made any sense except to understand that this was the future and I was centuries out of my time, a time traveller. Enough to know that you were dead and Camelot was lost to legend and Guinevere – was dead – and all the Knights of Camelot – enough to know that this was a new time entirely and I a stranger in it. I woke up on this hill and knew enough to scream and weep and scramble at the earth to take me back if only -

  
  


If only my heart told me you were still alive, though it made as much sense as rising up out of an earth I never slept in. As I sat there, with the wind and height and the world spinning around me, as I lay for a long time on the earth and felt it spin – as I lay there more came, _walkers_ I heard someone say, as though there were other ways to climb a hill, as though walking was a merry past time – I heard them speak of songs and stories, the legacy of this place, of magic and of myths. I understood that magic was allowed now but that nobody believed. I understood that I was a story and one man looked down on me when I lay back down for the dozenth time upon the ground to stop the hill from spinning – looked down at me and smirked and said -

  
  


“Who the hell are you then - King Arthur?”

  
  


I did not know what _hell_ was, but I knew better than to say _yes._

  
  


“Half a dozen bloody King Arthurs everywhere you go around here,” he said and I did not understand because how could I be more than one?

  
  


I lay on the ground, on the top of the hill and I felt the earth move as it never ceased to move here, felt the turn of the earth which was a ball in the vastness of a thing called space and I understood I was an idea, a dream, a concept. I was the promise of a better time, the glint of hope in the eyes of a million dreamers. I was a dream of peace, of the golden age they had spoken of, I was the herald of a new dawn, the prospect of a better future. I had woken up on this hill and I was just a concept.

  
  


I was just a concept and I did not know what to do with that. Not beyond moving my very real body and finding a quiet rock in a quiet moment to piss behind. Can a concept piss? Can it drink? Does it need to fulfill its destiny when people believe in it only as an abstract ideal? I did not want to be an ideal, but I did. I was _here –_ more than I had been in who only knew how many years, but I was less here for my physicality than when I had been nothing more than that dream.

  
  


I lay on the ground on the hill and I watched the sun cross the sky, across the day, across the multitudes that walked here seeking what I did not know- the ideal? Seeking hope, seeking Avalon some said – I watched the sun climb its own hill and begin to head back down and I watched the mist clear and saw more of the town below, heard strange sounds and smelled strange smells the likes of which were beyond reality. I understood I had travelled in time and this was the future. I understood it might not want me, for all it spoke of the Once and Future King and I – I did not yet know if I wanted it.

  
  


As the sun started to go down and the mist began to rise again, the crowds began to thin and the birds slipped into an evening sort of song – I understood that I was hungry, that I could not live forever on this hill. I understood that if I was, I was, and if there was no doorway leading into this hill I would have to seek one of a more permanent, solid nature. I turned my eyes to the town and reminded myself how to walk. I left the bulk of my armour beneath the tower and found my feet like a spring time foal . By the time I was halfway down the hill I had remembered how to really walk again.

As the hill spread out like a fold in a skirt, turning into a field, draping down towards the road, the mists grew deeper and swirled through sheep and thorny trees, and on the edge of a stile I paused in the knowledge of something approaching and I wished I had not left my sword atop the hill but froze in readiness and the thing in the mists froze too – I _knew._

  
  


I knew it was there at the foot of the hill, on the edge of the trees and that it was aware of me and was holding its breath just as I was -

  
  


\- and when I breathed out again, the mists parted and there you were.

  
  


There you were, and you said my name and you were as you always were and not aged a day and my lips shivered tears for how much I wanted to say and you stared at me as though the sun had fallen and walked down from the Tor to meet you, and I was that sun and you would stare beyond the blinding of your own eyes to see me. I wondered – not for long – if in truth, it had not been so very long, since you looked so much the same, and after all so did I, I had seen my face in gleam of afternoon sun on shiny stone and after all we were barely even adults just like the last time I saw you – yes I remembered like yesterday, there was water on your face and the memory of blood in my eyes – but it was not yesterday, I knew, I knew it had been milennia after all and still -

  
  


“You waited,” I said.

  
  


“I waited,” you said.

  
  


“Hold me,” I said and I remembered that too.

  
  


“Tell me,” I said in your arms.

  
  


“Yes,” you said, knowing, because you always knew - “It's August, August 2020, it has been over a thousand years.”

  
  


I am not ashamed to say I cried again.

  
  


I woke up on this hill and I was just a concept but you held on to me tightly all the same.

  
  


  
  


__x__

  
  


**Because if now isn't Albion's Time of Greatest Need then IDK what is?!**

  
  


**This kind of came to me on the cusp of a dream just after finishing the end of season 5 last night – I kind of died at the last few seconds of the show seeing Merlin in Actual Glastonbury, like my folks are from there and it's my favourite place in the world so this idea just had to come to me didn't it. :-) If literally one person likes this enough to tell me so then Imma gonna do a sequel I think :-) Sequel could get loooong....I got loads of half ideas brewing :-)**


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